Character and Conduct Part 8

_Amiel's Journal._

"Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well a.s.sured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it."

EMERSON.

"The toppling crags of duty scaled Are close upon the s.h.i.+ning table-lands To which our G.o.d Himself is moon and sun."

TENNYSON.

The Iron Chains of Duty

FEBRUARY 17

"... One conviction I have gained from the experience of the last years--life is not jest and amus.e.m.e.nt; life is not even enjoyment ...

life is hard labour. Renunciation, continual renunciation--that is its secret meaning, its solution. Not the fulfilment of cherished dreams and aspirations, however lofty they may be--the fulfilment of duty, that is what must be the care of man. Without laying on himself chains, the iron chains of duty, he cannot reach without a fall the end of his career."

_A Lear of the Steppes_, IVAN TURGENEV.

"Granted that life is tragic to the marrow, it seems the proper function of religion to make us accept and serve in that tragedy, as officers in that other and comparable one of war. Service is the word, active service, in the military sense; and the religious man is he who has a military joy in duty--not he who weeps over the wounded."

_Lay Morals_, R. L. STEVENSON.

Power

FEBRUARY 18

"Oh, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks!

Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come in you by the grace of G.o.d.

"THERE is nothing which comes to seem more foolish to us, I think, as years go by, than the limitations which have been quietly set to the moral possibilities of man. They are placidly and perpetually a.s.sumed.

'You must not expect too much of him,' so it is said. 'You must remember that he is only a man after all.' 'Only a man!' That sounds to me as if one said, 'You may launch your boat and sail a little way, but you must not expect to go very far. It is only the Atlantic Ocean.' Why, man's moral range and reach is practically infinite, at least no man has yet begun to comprehend where its limit lies. Man's powers of conquering temptation, of despising danger, of being true to principle, have never been even indicated, save in Christ."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

"Virgil said of the winning crew in his boat-race, 'They can, because they believe they can.'"

An Ideal Level

FEBRUARY 19

"No man who, being a Christian, desires the kingdom of G.o.d, can justly neglect giving his energy to the bettering of the social, physical, and educational condition of the poor, the diseased, and the criminal cla.s.ses. But he is not a Christian, or he has not realised the problem fully, if that is all he does. Social improvement is a work portions of which any one can do, in which all ought to share; but if we who follow Christ desire to do the best work in that improvement, and in the best way, we ought to strive--while we join in the universal movement towards a juster society--to give a spiritual life to that movement; to keep it at an ideal level; to free it from mere materialism; to maintain in it the monarchy of self-sacrifice; to fix its eyes on invisible and unworldly truths; to supply it with n.o.ble and spiritual faiths; to base all a.s.sociations of men on the ground of their spiritual union--all being children of G.o.d, and brothers of one another, in the love and faith by which Jesus lived; and to maintain the dignity of this spiritual communion of men in faith in their immortal union with G.o.d.

This is the fight of faith we, as fellow-workers with G.o.d, shall have to wage; and this not only binds us up with the poor, but with the rich, not only with the ignorant, but the learned; for on these grounds all men are seen as stripped of everything save of their humanity and their divine kins.h.i.+p.... Improve, then, the material condition and the knowledge of all who are struggling for justice; it is part of your life which if you neglect, you are out of touch with the new life; but kindle in it, uphold and sanctify in it, the life which is divine, the communion with man of G.o.d, without union with whose character all effort for social improvement will revert to new miseries and new despair."

_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.

Work

FEBRUARY 20

"Idleness standing in the midst of unattempted tasks is always proud.

Work is always tending to humility. Work touches the keys of endless activity, opens the infinite, and stands awe-struck before the immensity of what there is to do. Work brings a man into the good realm of facts.

Work takes the dreamy youth who is growing proud in his closet over one or two sprouting powers which he has discovered in himself, and sets him out among the gigantic needs and the vast processes of the world, and makes him feel his littleness. Work opens the measureless fields of knowledge and skill that reach far out of sight. I am sure we all know the fine, calm, sober humbleness of men who have really tried themselves against the great tasks of life. It was great in Paul, and in Luther, and in Cromwell. It is something that never comes into the character, never shows in the face of a man who has never worked."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

"No man is born into the world, whose work Is not born with him; there is always work, And tools to work withal, for those who will; And blessed are the h.o.r.n.y hands of toil!

The busy world shoves angrily aside The man who stands with arms akimbo set, Until occasion tells him what to do; And he who waits to have his task marked out Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled."

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

Special Work for Each

FEBRUARY 21

"There is some particular work which lies to every one's hand which he can do better than any other person. What we ought to be concerned about is not whether it be on a large scale or a small--about which we can never be quite certain--nor whether it is going to bring us fame or leave us in obscurity--an issue which is in the hands of G.o.d--but that we do it, and that we do it with all our might. Having done that, there is no cause to fret ourselves or ask questions which cannot be answered.

We may rest with a quiet conscience and a contented heart, for we have filled our place and done what we could. The battle of life extends over a vast area, and it is vain for us to inquire about the other wings of the army; it is enough that we have received our orders, and that we have held the few feet of ground committed to our charge. There let us fight and there let us die, and so fighting and so dying in the place of duty we cannot be condemned, we must be justified. Brilliant qualities may never be ours, but the homely virtues are within our reach, and character is built up not out of great intellectual gifts and splendid public achievements, but out of honesty, industry, thrift, kindness, courtesy, and grat.i.tude, resting upon faith in G.o.d and love towards man.

And the inheritance of the soul which ranks highest and lasts for ever is character."

_The Homely Virtues,_ Dr. JOHN WATSON.

The Sin of Idleness

FEBRUARY 22

"There is a certain amount of work to be done in this world. If any of us does not take his full share, he imposes that which he does not take on the shoulders of another; and the first cause of poverty, of disease, of misery in all States, is the overwork which is imposed on men and women by the idle and indifferent members of the nation. This is to steal from the human race; to steal from them joy, leisure, health, comfort and peace, and to impose on them sorrow and overwork, disease and homelessness, bitter anger and fruitless tears. This is the curse which the selfish dreamer leaves behind him. Many have been the fierce oppressors and defrauders of the human race, but the evil they have done is less than that done by those who drop by drop and hour by hour drain the blood of mankind by doing no work for the overworked. This is the crime with which the idle and indifferent will be confronted when the great throne is set in our soul, and the books we have written on men's lives are opened, and G.o.d shall lay judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet. 'Lord, what hast Thou to do with it?' we will say. 'I did not neglect Thee; I took my ease, it is true, but I kept Thy law. I was never impious, never an atheist. When was I not religious?' Then He will answer: 'Inasmuch as ye never worked for the least of these My brothers, ye never worked for Me!'"

_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.

"Let us start up and live: here come moments that cannot be had again; some few may yet be filled with imperishable good."

J. MARTINEAU.

Idleness

FEBRUARY 23